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New Caldera Promised
An anonymous reader writes "SCO has announced their plans to release a new version of Caldera Linux by the end of the year. From the announcement: 'To provide extensive reliability and performance features, the Linux Kernel 2.5 codebase has been merged with recently developed additions to SCO's world leading UNIX core operating system. Already contained code owned by SCO is still included benefiting the stability and overall experience opposed to recent Linux kernel releases.' The question is, is anyone listening?"
If SCO does not abide by the GPL for all code that they do not have the copyright to, then they will be in violation of the GPL and may be sued by the copyright holders of any such code.
Two things can happen with this. One, the release the new version of Caldera like a normal Linux distro, in which case SCO has actively released all the "infringing" code under GPL. The second thing that could happen is that they don't release it like a normal distro and put out a binary only version. This of course will lead to the EFF suing them into Oblivion (bada-ching) because of the copyright violations as listed under the GPL.
I guess there is a third possibility: they release Calder and the source, and continue to be asshats and try to sue everyone who uses Linux. Saddly, the third option is looking more and more likely.
Space for rent, inquire within
(emphasis added)
Not to mention that "Linux" is a trademark owned by Linus Torvalds himself!
I think it's also likely the GP was confusing the EFF with FSF..
my password really is 'stinkypants'
OTOH, why would SCO even do this? Any belief that it will give them some cash flow or some other position that benefits them is irrational.
Oh, they don't plan to release the code at all. This is a setup on their part; they want to get sued for violating the GPL. They will then attempt to argue in court that the GPL is "unenforceable" and therefore invalid. If they win in court (a very big [i]if[/i], given that this has been tried before but it's always failed), then they'll claim ownership over all of the Linux codebase and that will be that.
They'll lose, of course; it takes little more than common sense to see that. But since when has common sense ever reigned in that company?
> they want to get sued for violating the GPL.
0 43539340
They already are; it's one of IBM's counterclaims in SCO v IBM.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040331
The sixth counterclaim, to be precise. (Just search for "SIXTH".)
But of course, in a case like this (as opposed to the IBM case), you don't normally sue for "GPL violations"; you sue for simple copyright violation, and leave it up to the defense to raise the issue of the GPL if they think it will help (which it won't if they haven't followed its terms). Note that IBM also includes copyright violations for their code in Linux in their eighth counterclaim (which is going to be the basis of a motion for summary judgement as soon as expert testimony is complete).
If they want to get the GPL ruled unenforceable, they're going to need to find a better trick than distibuting someone else's code without that someone else's permission. 'Cause that's illegal whether or not the GPL is involved.
Try entering an invalid page for openlinux.org (e.g. this) Note that repeated requests result in different responses.
For example:
- Remove the &id=24097 from the Querystring. The page still loads this press release. Releasedetail.cfm is nothing but a static page
- Now mess w/ the URL to generate a 404. You'll get this error:
> 404
> [...]
> because Bill Gates is a Jehovah's witness and so nothing can work on St. Swithin's day.
Not to mention the whole front page is reduced to linking to this single press release? The site has no navigation.
Just try any one of these out:
5 634632 561
http://www.openlinux.org/releasedetail.cfm?id=
http://www.openlinux.org/releasedetail.cfm?id=543
http://www.openlinux.org/releasedetail.cfm?id=235
You can put in whatever value you want for the releasedetail.cfm id field, but either way it shows the same thing. I don't think any real company would have a Web site which worked like that – if it were real there would be some sort of error message or another press release.
And as I said earlier, I don't think it's that hard to set up an Apache virtual server and provide false information when registering a domain... depending on the registrar it may be quite a while before they realize that the domain doesn't belong to who it says it belongs to.
Besides, notice that there are (1) a lot of typos, and (2) no references on the main SCO site...
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
> It's a bet against all odds, but what have they got to lose?
1 85813203 has information about it.
SCO has nothing to lose.
It has already lost its reputation - and most of its cash reserves - and any chance of getting its user base back.
But aside from that, it is likely that this was a bogus press release - http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060617
Seriously Slashdot editors, pull this story and make yourselves look less retarded.
1) SCO distributes ALL of their press releases through PR Newswire, not through some random website
2) the openlinux.org site hasn't been changed in years before this change, and has obviously been hacked, or a student at the hosting university in Germany is playing a nice prank
3) This press release is not available on SCO.com
4) The grammar in this press release is atrocious, which is highly unusual, even for SCO. Probably written by a non-native english speaker, which makes sense since this abandoned web server is hosted at a German university.
Seriously....just pull the freakin article....
Morons.
magnus@orca:~$ host www.openlinux.orgn ux.org mail is handled by 50 fauern.informatik.uni-erlangen.de.$ host 131.188.40.90c a:~$
www.openlinux.org has address 131.188.40.90
www.openlinux.org mail is handled by 100 mailhub.rrze.uni-erlangen.de.
www.openlinux.org mail is handled by 10 openlinux.informatik.uni-erlangen.de.
www.openli
magnus@orca:~
90.40.188.131.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer fsi-server.informatik.uni-erlangen.de.
magnus@or
The IP Address (131.188.40.90) belongs to the network of the University of Erlangen, the address resolves into fsi-server.informatik.uni-erlangen.de, hence the FSI INF (Informatik is German for Computer Science). So guys, this is most likely a joke.
Try the following commands:
Well, when I visit the site, it freely admits it's a hoax:
"Recently, on this site a fake anouncement of Caldera Open Linux X was found.
We thought it was obvious enough that it was fake. We had to learn it was not for all people reading it. So we took it down now. Apparently, also the DNS records are changed/deleted, so soon enough you won't get to this site using openlinux.org anyways.
We thought, it would not spread from Slashdot before we stop it (ie, this weekend). It was funny to follow people speculating and finding out about this site. Some people pointed out good reasons why this is hoax/parody, some bad or wrong reasons. Overall, we hope most people concluded it indeed was a parody.
Our submit to Slashdot concluded with "Is this real?" - sadly enough, Slashdot's editor wrote up a new text without any hints about this. We can't blame him, he maby was just in a hurry..
Nothing got hacked, it's just we got a previously used IP for this machine, so why not having some fun content on it? We apologize for any inconviences arised though! We didn't suspect it would be taken so serious. Some hints in the text proving this weren't read (talking about XML on a Server OS?), others were found but still taken serious. Please stop spreading this fake news, and if you know some sites who published it, please inform them to update their content. Thanks."
a page saying nothing but "FSI INF". "FSI INF"? WTF?
Heh. That's shorthand for "Fachschaftsinitiative Informatik". Translates roughly to "Student Council of the CS department."
So, basically, Scuttlemonkey fucked up.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.